Bachmann mum on presidential run

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won’t say whether she’s running for president, and insists the focus should be on making sure President Barack Obama isn’t elected to a second term in 2012.

“I think what people are asking for is a bold, strong, constitutional conservative, and I think we’re going to find out who that person is. But the main focus right now needs to be on the fact that we cannot afford a second term for Barack Obama,” Bachmann said in the Capitol Wednesday when asked by POLITICO whether she believed possible GOP presidential contenders can equal her credibility with tea party conservatives.

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ABC News, citing a source close to the congresswoman, first reported Wednesday morning that Bachmann is seriously weighing a presidential bid. Bachmann confirmed she is planning to visit Iowa on Jan. 21—and that visit is aimed at making sure that after 2010 Republican victories, “step two will be repealling President Obama…in 2012.” Her appearance at a fundraiser for the Iowans for Tax Relief PAC will be her third visit to Iowa in the past eight months, and she has also spent time in the early primary state of Michigan.

Bachmann wouldn’t say if she’s receiving outside encouragement to run. “The focus isn’t on me as a nominee or anyone in particular as a nominee; the focus is on making sure we don’t have a second term for Barack Obama, so it’s that conversation that I want to continue, that narrative,” she said.

If she does decide to run, Bachmann would likely shake up the field in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses: She’s a fundraising powerhouse who raised over $13 million for her House reelection bid in 2010. She also has a longstanding relationship and ideological kinship with Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who represents the conserative northwest corner of the state. And as a representative from neighboring Minnesota who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, she would bring a common midwestern background and sensibility that could play well in the state’s living rooms.